


A night of dancing

by Carton_of_lies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ballroom Dancing, Canon Timeline, Canon-Typical The Spiral Content (The Magnus Archives), Idk this is my first fic please don't make fun of me, It fits with the timeline, It's just weird, Other, Sort Of, The Spiral Fear Domain (The Magnus Archives), the interaction isn't actually romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28694820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carton_of_lies/pseuds/Carton_of_lies
Summary: I just stood there for a second, then I decided to push past him to keep going.As I did so, he grabbed my hand.The pain was agonizing, like wrapping my hand in razor wire and punching a brick wall, but it wasn’t real. Yes, it was terrible and made me want to keel over and sob from how much it hurt, but I couldn’t actually feel it.“Come now Book Burner, stay and dance with me.” He said, spinning me in a circle. The way he spun me was so… gentle, even despite his razor wire grip. It was maddening.“Have you ever danced in a ballroom this big?” He asked, but I don’t think he was talking to me.________________________________________S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶: Gerard KeayRegarding: A Night of Dancing(or: Gerry gets bamboozled)
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Michael | The Distortion, Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion (The Magnus Archives)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	A night of dancing

Statement of: Gerard Keay  
Regarding: A Night of Dancing  
 ~~Date:~~  
Statement:

To be clear this isn’t an official statement. I’ve just… I’ve had so many weird experiences that most of them blend together. Except that, I’ve been thinking about this one a lot lately. Seems like an okay idea to put it down on paper.

This happened a few years back, it was one of the times when I was traveling abroad to get away from my mum. I think I was in Greece, maybe Italy. I remember it was somewhere warm and I had spent a lot of money to get there.

Needless to say I wasn't exactly thrilled when I stumbled into someplace I shouldn’t have and ended up running from a pack of hunters. I don’t know what they smelled on me, but whatever it was, they didn’t like it. I could tell they were gearing up for a long chase in the way they looked at me, that weird, feral look that you only ever see on one of them...

By the time I started running, I was already so tired from traveling and walking around all day. Eventually I pulled ahead enough to catch my breath. I found a small alley in the dying light of day and paused there.

My vision was swimming from running and I swear I was about to throw up from exhaustion, when just there, right in front of me was a pale-yellow door.  
It looked way too clean to actually belong in the alley, I think it even shone. Maybe it was taunting me, daring me to come and open it.

Now, by then I knew better than to open a suspicious yellow door like that but I was feeling impulsive and the hunters were gaining on me.  
So, I opened the door.

I don’t remember stepping inside, but I don’t think you have to with a door like that.

I _do_ remember two things specifically that stuck out to me after crossing the threshold.

The first was the long expanse of corridor. It ended in a right turn and in between there must have been a thousand other right turns. The walls were a pale green that might have been pleasant if not for the patterns of dark blue filigree that seemed to crawl up the walls like inchworms. I remember thinking that the door I came in through wouldn’t be there anymore so I would just have to keep going.

The second thing I noticed was the carpet.

It was that generic black with geometric shapes, like the kind they have in movie theaters. Except it was… off somehow. It made me feel like I was falling— no, like I was bouncing.  
I might have been staring at that damn carpet for seconds or for days, until my ears popped and I had to look away.

A faint waltz music drifted towards me, muffled by the presence of so many creeping walls.

I recognized the tune but it was wrong. I couldn’t tell you how it was wrong or what it was supposed to sound like, probably couldn’t even tell you what it was called.

On a whim I followed the music. It only took me two turns, surprisingly, before I came to a white door that was glittering like the one I had come in through.  
I just tapped on the wood of the door with the pads of my fingers and it creaked open slowly.

The room before me looked far too small and unassuming, but the second I stepped inside, it became infinite and menacing in its size.

The room looked to be a hall of some sort, entirely empty but for columns of white marble at patterned increments and mirrors hung between the columns that reflected nothing.

White light illuminated spots down the center at about the same increments as the mirrors, but when I looked up to see the fixtures, I saw only a plain black sky. It was void but I got the feeling that it was just badly painted.

Of course, the door I had entered through was gone leaving only the same endless ballroom behind me.

The waltz music echoed but my footsteps did not, neither did my voice. So, I walked. By now I was in it and I didn’t have anything to lose so why not just keep walking.

As soon as I finished thinking though, a laugh echoed through the room starting at one distant end then to the other and slowly getting closer until it was right behind me. It cut in and out of the music with a hazy crackle like television static. The music warped like melting plastic as the laughter approached me.

I spun around quick as I could but there was nothing there. So, I turned back the way I was going and, in the spot where I was just looking there was now a face.  
It startled me, but I don’t think I screamed. I for sure jumped back.

The person—It looked like a man—laughed again, this time his laughter bounced off every mirror and they all flushed a pale purple that reminded me of... blushing.

His presence made me uneasy, I’m not sure why, he looked absolutely normal. Tall, sort of thin. Lots of yellow hair and a pleasant smile.

“How quaint.” He said with a voice like a singing wine glass, “The Book Burner comes to see me at last. Is the eye displeased with you as well?”

I just stood there for a second, then I decided to push past him to keep going.

As I did so, he grabbed my hand.

The pain was agonizing, like wrapping my hand in razor wire and punching a brick wall, but it wasn’t real. Yes, it was terrible and made me want to keel over and sob from how much it hurt, but I couldn’t actually feel it.

“Come now Book Burner, stay and dance with me.” He said, spinning me in a circle. The way he spun me was so… gentle, even despite his razor wire grip. It was maddening.

“Have you ever danced in a ballroom this big?” He asked, but I don’t think he was talking to me.

I just stood there quietly and looked him over.

He was taller than when I had first seen him, wearing a brown coat that shed lines and shapes and those weird floaty things that stick to your vision if you press on your eyelids.  
He had a scarf wrapped around his neck, but I don’t think it really had a purpose anymore. The cuffs of his jeans were darkened slightly by water and his thick black snow boots were still caked with fine powdered snow even though it was warm in this place.

I asked him if he was going anywhere.

He responded by filling the entirety of that infinite room with so many tight coils of laughter that it felt too crowded to move.

“Oh, Book Burner,” He choked out between laughs, “I am already nowhere, why should I want to be somewhere else?”  
He abruptly stopped laughing and I realize with a jolt that his words hadn’t echoed, but his laughter had.

He stared at me—through me—for a long moment before pulling us together in a movement I couldn’t register.

The waltz starts up again louder and more… I don’t know, passionately? Whatever or whoever this thing is, he's leading us in perfect rhythm, waltzing down the winding eternity of the ballroom.

Occasionally, he would laugh and make the music warp and rewind with the bubble of echo that fell around us like cold rain. I think the first few times it happened I actually shook my head to dry my hair, which only made my partner laugh harder.

At first, I was afraid of him, of what he might do to me. I was afraid that his razor wire hands might actually cut me, they already bled so much… After a while I accepted that he wasn’t going to do anything and he wasn’t going to cut me.

I mean, not that I didn’t still see it as a possibility or that I wasn’t ready to run or punch this guy, more that it just didn’t seem as likely.

Confusion and curiosity became the new mood for the evening.

Was it evening? Maybe it was.

I looked down at the floor and I noticed that it was just a video of the tide receding, sped up and played backwards so that all the movement flashes past you in a second.

I looked up at the ceiling again, it was still a terribly painted rendition of the void.

I looked over at the mirrors that had now turned yellow like the hair that swallowed the space around my partner’s head in thick ringlets that seemed to go on for as long as the ballroom.

That comparison makes no sense, it’s hair, of course it had an end and I could see the end of it. But trust me when I say that it was unending.

The confusion drifted away rather easily and I was left with acceptance that this was my life now, dancing with a confusing beast in an infinite ballroom until he decides to eat me.

Sick of the constant spinning, and in desperate need of a cigarette, I spoke up.

“Are you going to kill me or am I just supposed to dance forever?” _Or until I lose my mind_ , I thought.

He laughs, “You are clever, Book Burner.” He sighs like a chord that isn’t quite in tune, “No I suppose I’m going to have to let you out soon. Your mother is waiting and she is not so agreeable as me.”

I frown and the waltz music settles in again. His sharp fingers are digging through mine as we turn and turn and never miss a step.

“Don’t suppose you’d have a cigarette?” I asked. It’s a long shot but hey, smokers can’t be choosers.

He laughed at that, a low chuckle from deep in his throat.

“What?” I asked warily, Less of a question and more of an accusation.

He just leaned in, kissing me on the mouth. It only lasted a second and it was disgusting, tasted like pond water and stale breadcrumbs.

As he pulled away slowly our mouths were still connected by the familiar weight of a cigarette. He kept the opposite end in his mouth for longer than was strictly… normal. If the situation was at all normal, I mean.

His eyes bore into me as he relinquished the opposite end of my cigarette and it came away lit.

He said nothing, just turned his head toward the ceiling and blew rings of neon green smoke into the air above us.

The bad rendition of void was now graced with glowing green chandeliers continuing at the same increments as the mirrors forever onward. Through all of this neither one of us missed a beat, our footwork was constant and never ending.

“Thanks.” I say, but I don’t even know what I’m thanking him for.

He giggles, “You are an odd one, Book Burner. I think I’m going to like you.”

For the first time in what feels like years we stop waltzing.

He runs a finger over the underside of my chin. It doesn’t feel like razor wire anymore, more like… a paper bag full of lukewarm wet cement mixed with thumbtacks.

“You should not stay longer. Don’t come back again.” He says. I barely registered the creak of the door before I fell backwards onto a bed of wet sand.

The sun was rising by now, giving me just enough light to see by. Whoever—or whatever—that thing was he had dumped me in the middle of nowhere. A beach somewhere chilly.

The only proof that anything had happened at all was the blood under my nails, my cigarette, and a cartoonish heart drawn in the sand near where I had fallen. It wasn’t shallow, either, it was carved about a foot into the earth.

Though I guessed that it was made by a single index finger.

I shrugged off the experience at the time, nothing new really. It was the Spiral, it was supposed to confuse me.

I’m thinking about it more and more though, I keep seeing those doors. Just out the corner of my eye. I’m doing my best to ignore them, it’s not like they’re following _me_.

And anyways I can’t go through them. I managed to get up to one once, Just to try the handle.

It was locked.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> This is my very first published work and I've never written fanfiction before, then I got this idea and I wanted to send some love to my boys Michael and Gerry.
> 
> I love you and stay safe!


End file.
